


Losing Hope

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Magical Realism, Murder, Rape, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:13:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock does not need anyone, especially not one of Mycroft's toy soldiers. Not when he has got an amazing puzzle in Mycroft's fanboy, a functional bedsit and plenty of cocaine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Losing Hope

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for rape, torture and murder resulting in major character death.
> 
> None of the major canon characters come out of this smelling of roses. Blame watching Scandal in Bohemia.

"This is John Watson." Stamford indicated the small grey man standing beside him. "I knew him at Bart's. He's looking for a flat share."

Sherlock's gaze flickered over the man in front of him, observing, and drew the most statistically likely conclusions. His acquaintanceship with Stamford and his familiarity with the layout of Barts made it obvious the man was a doctor. Grey but tanned to his cuffs - recently injured, not yet fully recovered, and returned from abroad but not a holiday. The stance should have been military but the left shoulder was too far back as if that side had been heavier when he was trained. A winged human, then, one wing recently amputated. Military man implied an Army doctor returned from either Iraq or Afghanistan. One of the winged humans he had heard of being mutilated by the Islamic extremists there. "Unsuitable," Sherlock declared, turning back to his experiments.

"Hang on," John complained. "You don't know anything about me."

"You're a winged human recently returned from Iraq or Afghanistan after your left wing was amputated. This has left you severely traumatised, which you are coping with by self-medicating – alcohol from the fine tremor, sweating, dry eyes, and lips – and risk-taking behaviour – gambling from the betting slip in your shirt pocket. Your therapist despairs of any improvement. You have no interest in returning to civilian life. As you are fit to work you soon need to find both housing and employment," Sherlock informed John without looking up. "I have no need for an irregular source of rent."

* * *

It was a clinically gory crime scene, staged to shock and scare, in a disused warehouse. The area was used more by prostitutes and dealers than by factory workers now. The corpse had been expertly butchered: fingers methodically removed at the first knuckle, the right arm skinned with surgical precision, the jaw smashed with a large blunt implement. The bullet that had penetrated his left shoulder at a 30° angle, severing the left subclavian artery, had been cut out through the ribcage and the entry path carefully disfigured, probably with a scalpel. With the body stripped, the fingers taken, and the jaw destroyed, identification would rely on members of the public recognising the mutilated face. A white male, no distinguishing marks remaining, average height, average weight, 30-40, could be anyone with as little legal reason to be here as anyone else.

Scrubbing his face, DI Lestrade yawned massively. "Done yet Anderson?"

The man in question stood from his crouch, popping his spine. "5 minutes."

"Right." Lestrade nodded. "Any luck with door-to-door, Donovan?"

"Industrial area," she spoke from by the door she had just entered. "Not many people about." When Lestrade looked at her dubiously she clarified. "There's been a sweep here recently. No one's working it any more. None of the security guards saw anything, not that there are many of them anymore." Blowing on her hands she continued, "I'll come back in the morning. Maybe he got here before the offices closed."

"Pathologist says the time of death was between 8 and 10. Sounds pretty unlikely, but worth a try." Lestrade nodded. "We'll bring in a psychic in the morning. See what they can pick up." Turning away from her, he continued, "You may as well go. Nothing any of us can do here until morning."

"Thanks, sir."

"Sir!" Anderson called from the corner he was finishing up in, halting Donovan on her way out.

"Yes?" Lestrade said as they both hurried over.

He was putting a slip of paper in an evidence bag, a receipt possibly. "Betting slip for a Dr. John Watson," he said, handing the bag to Lestrade.

"Could be the victim," Lestrade said, noting the bookie's address through the bag before passing it to Donovan.

"Or the murderer," Donovan said darkly, looking at the surgical neatness of the corpse.

"Make a stop before you go home see if we can get a description," Lestrade replied.

* * *

The man was on the shorter side of average, stocky and plainly clothed. A persona designed to scream average boring dull belied to a keen observer by the confidant stance with military tones and the gun callouses on the hand he offered to shake. One of Mycroft's agents no doubt.

"Sherlock Holmes."

"We've met," the man said, curtly stiffening as if upset before turning to face Mycroft. "You asked to see me, sir?" Sherlock diverted most of his attention to working out what the man had meant. If he was one of Mycroft's men, he could have seen him before, but he did not recognise the man in that context. So they must have met in an unrelated situation. There was nothing memorable about the man other than his determination to be unnoticed.

"Where were you on Monday the 21st of February between 7pm and 11pm, Captain Watson?" Mycroft asked. Watson, Watson, Sherlock thought, Dr. John Watson, potential flatmate, now employee of Mycroft. Well, that was an uninteresting little mystery solved, he mused hoping that the case Mycroft was determined he take would be more interesting.

"On a military transport from Afghanistan between 1200 and 2100 hours. Then in debriefing from 2130 to 2200. After that I was alone until 0800 when my debriefing resumed," Watson responded.

"Between 8pm and 10pm an unknown man was killed in a disused warehouse thirty minutes from the base Captain Watson was being debriefed in. The only evidence recovered was a betting slip made out in Captain Watson's name three days before he returned. It is estimated that to dismember the corpse and prepare the scene would have taken an hour. Due to the classified nature of his mission, we are unable to provide Captain Watson with an alibi." Mycroft pushed a thick file across the table. "Captain Watson is, therefore, the prime suspect and currently on bail."

"What do you want me to do?" Sherlock asked, leaning back against a wall in a manner more reminiscent of a bolshie teenager than a thirty-something in a Savile Row suit.

"Find out who ordered the murder and why they decided to frame one of my operatives for a murder we can easily prove he didn't commit," Mycroft answered. "Captain Watson will be at your disposal until you come to a conclusion."

* * *

 

From the case files Mycroft had obtained Sherlock quickly ascertained that the victim was a minor identity fraudster who had not yet come to the Met's attention. He had no connections to the borough he was found in, but neither did Watson. The police had found no connection between the victim and Watson, but they had ignored several glaring omissions in the victim's flat and that the victim's primary hard drive had been wiped and replaced with their secondary.

Sherlock idly mused on what could have been on that hard drive interesting enough for Mycroft's little stalker to need it wiping. He had never been so close to anyone Mycroft had found before.

The solider was as bland and average as he had first appeared. He gambled but held no debts; he drank but not to excess. He worked covert missions, but with four other men who had not been targeted. Two of his team would have been more believable as sadistic murderers and two would have confused the issue of why they had been set up less. John Watson was the average of the group, seemingly chosen at random to send a message to Mycroft.

The bookmaker used to place the incriminating bet was a Ladbrokes on Liverpool Street, not John's London haunt, a William Hill in Woodford Green near his sister's house. The victim lived in Elephant and Castle and had no history of gambling.

Frustrated with the failure of the past few weeks' work to produce any viable leads, Sherlock spun to his feet, dropping his violin carelessly, and paced rapidly across the narrow space of his bedsit.

Even the message was unclear, he muttered to himself, hands clenching spasmically. Three other teams worked similar missions, carrying out the overall objective spilt between them and obscured to lower the risk of information being passed. So choosing even a team to pick a mark from seemed a random act.

The items missing from the victim's flat had not appeared in any of the Capital's many pawn shops nor had they arrived at any of the waste disposal units that served the ever increasing population of the South East. Either, and less likely, there was something that connected the victim to Mycroft's irritant or, more likely, the murderer had thought the police would notice and that they would connect the missing items to John. A bible made some sense, if it was assumed that victim was harassing John for his wings. The ornament suggested that the victim and John were supposed to have known each other secretly – maybe through the same online dating site— but the victim's computer had not had any saved links to dating websites so the police had not checked for profiles. Sherlock's search had found profiles for both John and the victim on the same site.

Getting the last can of Carlsberg out the carrier bag by the door, John moved gracelessly past Sherlock to sit in the room's only chair, drawing Sherlock's attention to him. John's motions were blurred and his reflexes slowed by the 3 cans he had already drunk. His face pleasantly lax, his pose liquid once he had settled in the aged arm chair. Like an overly friendly dog in front of his master's fire.

There were no dating websites on John's laptop's history or favourites. Especially not ones aimed at 'Military Tops looking for civilian bottoms'. If his badly hidden porn was any clue, that was the reverse of what he wanted.

The victim did not make sense. Someone that Mycroft's fanboy wanted to get rid of but not someone who worked to set John up. So setting John up had been secondary no matter what Mycroft thought of himself. But that did not make sense with the effort taken to create a murder scene that implicated John so thoroughly. So the incoherent set-up at the flat must have been a mistake, but what was it telling him?

Frustration bubbled and boiled beneath his skin. He should just write off the soldier. He does not know anything. He is not important. A stubborn part of Sherlock's mind balked at sacrificing John on the altar of Mycroft's mission throwing his thoughts back in to the circular path they have occupied for the last few hours. A hamster on a wheel.

It boiled over, building until he snaps. Frustrated, Sherlock spun, growling, catching John by his weaker shoulder, thumb pressing into the ball of his joint and slamming him against the wall. The half full can in John's hand flew across the room, spraying cheap beer across the grotty brown carpet. Sherlock grasped John's wrists and pulled him off balance, enjoying the pained expression on John's face. Smirking uncontrollably as the height difference made the stockier man strain desperately against him, he made sure that John's weight was pulling his weaker shoulder and resting on his weaker leg.

"Why you?" Sherlock spat at John. "Bland. Boring. Dull! Average! NORMAL! There is no reason for it to be you."

Something bubbled under his skin, pushed him to find the reason why John had been chosen before Mycroft's time limit ran out and the solider, his only viable clue, was sacrificed for Mycroft's objective. Warped his pure anger into something he barely recognised; hardened him in his boxers and drew his attention towards John's mouth until he bit at it. He ground John's wrists against the wall, almost lifting him off the ground, tasting blood in his mouth as he spun John.

"You make no sense!" he bit out.

One hand scrabbled to undo and yank down their trousers. Then he was slamming frustration and anger into the other man's pliant body, feeling the feathers of John's remaining wing flutter against him and his breath catch in silent sobs until Sherlock's release brought peace and quiet to his raging thoughts.

He had failed. "Why you?" Sherlock asked as he released John. John crumpled into a dazed heap face down at Sherlock's feet, his single wing covering one bare leg. "There's no logical reason for it to be you." In the morning his time limit was up.

* * *

A solider convicted of a sadistic murder with seemingly no motive isn't treated lightly by the Crown Prosecution Service. Old prejudices prevail when it comes to winged humans, and they are treated like the fallen angels they were once believed to be. The murder in Lambeth had been connected to three other murders in the London area. None had any evidence connecting John to them, but neither could he provide an alibi for any of them, having been once again out of the country on missions the Crown would rather not admit it had authorised.

John Watson's first night in his new maximum security home came with four life sentences to be served consecutively. The only positives of his situation was that he was neither considered to be a suicide risk nor a threat to stability within the prison population, meriting him time in general population and a cellmate, Jefferson Hope. Thus, after lock down, John found himself confronted by a fellow lifer similarly convicted of horrific crimes, but this man almost certainly guilty of them.

John was trained in close combat by the British army. Small, stocky, and, his mates would have said, deadly in a fight. He didn't expect the pillow case pulled over his head, nor did he expect Hope's six foot and overweight frame to slam into him, smashing his head into the cell wall and dazing him. He didn't expect Hope to be so fast, or to find himself hanging from his bunk by his belt his first night in jail. He expected a heart attack or fight gone wrong. He expected a better death.

* * *

The case was a dead end: the murderous cellmate was an enforcer for one of the East End drug tsars, but there the trail went cold. Mycroft used them to dispose of unnecessary witness and informants, but it was just as likely that Mycroft's nuisance used the same contacts. Watson dead could provide no more reason for why he had been chosen than could Watson alive, and he was significantly less entertaining. The victim of the original murder was a minor identity fraudster. The police found no connection to Watson and neither could Sherlock find a connection to either Mycroft or a sufficiently powerful criminal to cause Mycroft so many problems.

The only remaining lead was an instance of attempted blackmail that Mycroft insisted was connected. The blackmailer's information had already been recovered and her position as a continued threat removed. So, Sherlock would have to use the information Mycroft's people had gathered to trace Adler's connection to this mysterious crime lord.

* * *

 

Adler, as he quickly discovered, had been a stereotypical Domme: black leather, red talons. The usual, Sherlock sighed. She had held promise as a lead, a diversion, but it was becoming clear to him that she had been a barely useful pawn. In a violation of her clients' trust, she had taken photos of them in vulnerable positions, a tendency that seemed to have begun in the earliest days of her career from the dates, but no hints of blackmail or other misuse emerged until Mycroft's fan boy appeared.

The positive of Adler's arrogance and need for control was that she had left coded references to her sponsor and where she met him in her diary and appointment book. The man she meet had, according to Adler, deep seated submissive tendencies and a clear sadistic streak. In the simple code she used for all her clients, she called him Marcus Kavanagh. A quick conversion provided James M, the last name being of Irish origin and 8 letters in length. They met in public places, playing out Adler's belief in James' submissive tendencies while never entering a full scene. By now the CCTV footage would be long gone and Sherlock would have to rely on the public's often faulty memory.

* * *

Sherlock came back to himself, his mind muddied with the constant throbbing ache of multiple broken bones and the acrid smell of stale urine. He groaned, bile rising in his throat and sickening pain overtaking him as he automatically tried to strain against his bonds. The burns on his chest pulled tight in sharp counterpoint to the deep ache in his limbs. The interrogation before came back to him in drips and drabs, and he wondered hysterically at the incongruence of questions about Mycroft's favourite cake amongst questions about counter-terrorism investigations. The questions had all been treated with the same level of importance. No answer led to a burn, the wrong answer a broken bone. Sherlock had answered a lot of questions wrong, part of him noted abstractly.

"Well, you're persistent at least," the same sing-song voice that had called questions at before him taunted. The voice made the analytical part of his mind shut up completely, leaving the hysterical part that he did not recognise to whimper. "Dumb, but persistent. It's a wonderful epitaph, don't you think? Not even brave or honourable; just persistent." There was a pause and the sing-song voice murmured unclearly then light footsteps coming closer. "Ah, we're ready to begin again. What is your brother's favourite pastime?"

Sherlock stayed silent, unable to think of anything Mycroft enjoyed except manipulating the world around him. The iron lowered to his face and Sherlock screamed as his cheek was burned. The flesh spitting and sizzling like frying the bacon it smelt of. "Eating!" he tried, desperate for the agonising heat to leave him.

"His arms. No they're already broken. His legs. No." The was a pause, parodying thought. "Start cutting off his fingers."

There was a clatter, the iron being put back on the heat Sherlock's mind supplied, and then cloth rustled. The voice in his mind that had stopped whimpering to narrate how fucked he was shut up, giving way to begging. With a start Sherlock realised he was pleading out loud. He gurgled uncontrollably at the sensation of a not-sharp-enough knife being forced through his knuckle. The flesh less cut than ripped apart. The sickening crunch as his knuckle separated. The blinding pain he could not escape. The burning humiliation as he felt his bowel release and the rank smell of faeces filled his nose.

The knife, the pain, didn't stop until the voice spoke again. "Tell me about Libya."

It took the heat of the iron nearly touching his face making his skin prickle with more fear-soured sweat as he tried to flinch away to break through the dizziness. "It's a country?" Sherlock hazarded a guess. The iron pressed firmly against his cheek, melting the flesh and forcing a tortured howl to rack Sherlock's body. His mind whiting out and his ears filling with a persistent drone.

"Tell me about Libya." The voice ordered again. Sherlock tried to think through the pain for an answer, any answer, babbling until he felt the heat of the iron again. His panicked exclamation was cut off by the voice, "His other hand, Seb."

The knife fell to work once again, the pain more excruciating but harder to focus on. Throughout, Sherlock babbled out everything he knew that might be remotely connected to Libya, anything to stop the pain, anything to live. Please, the hysterical voice begged, let me live.

"Stop," the sing-song voice called out. Short-lived relief coursed through Sherlock's battered body before the voice continued, "It's useless. He doesn't know anything. Get rid of him, Seb."

"Yes, Jim," a deep, cracked voice said from close by Sherlock and then the tip of a sharp blade pressed in to the side of his neck. "Was he a good fuck? That winged pansy?" Sherlock sobbed convulsively against the blade, feeling it cut in and blood trickle down his neck. "Knew he would be. Pity I didn't get to try him." The knife slashed across Sherlock's neck.

 


End file.
